Biswajit Tripathy

Pihu is the story of a two-year-old girl who has been trapped inside a home when her father went on a tour to Kolkata and her mother committed suicide after a night long fight with her husband. This is supposedly inspired from a real-life story authenticity of which I am noy sure of. It has been seen that the kitchen tap is running, iron switch is ON and there has been constant power cut all day long. With limited foods and no access to outside, Pihu is in for a day long ordeal. Myra who has played Pihu played very natural Infront of the camera. The entire movie revolves around this two-year-old played by the six-year-old Myra and her emotions. While you will be on the edge of your seat all along, you also won’t be able to breathe properly until you finish watching the movie. The movie has so much disturbing moments that would make you say one thing, “I’ll take care of my child”. I must say, Vinod Kapri has done a tremendous job.

Falling down is a good movie which is not a great movie to watch. It has a very negative approach of life.

A good watch, time pass and paisa vasool. Lovely take and perfect sequel to Fukrey.

Two wonderful kids, Hetal Gada as Pari and Krrish Chhabria as Chhotu walks a wonderful journey of life to give us one superb movie called Dhanak. Pari’s only wish from life is to gift the vision to her loving brother Chhotu on his ninth birthday. The kids stay with their Chacha and Chachi and when their wicked Chachi refuse to pay for his surgery, she along with her brother starts a journey to meet Shahrukh Khan (shooting in a nearby place) who they believe will pay for the surgery. What happens in the journey makes the synopsis of the movie. Pari is a fan of Shahrukh while Chhotu is a fan of Salman. Their cute quarrel about who is a better actor gives some nice moments to the movie. The chemistry between both the kids would make you believe that they are real siblings. A female bandit on the way, an about to be wedded family, a gang wanting to kidnap Pari and sale her off, a truck driver who gives them lift, a foreigner who is walking for world peace are the various characters you meet for a short duration on their journey. The story line is so real, the kids are so lively, the scenes from picturesque Rajasthan makes it a wonderful show piece. Above everything, it’s the kids to watch out for. Kukunoor came back after a wonderful Laxmi with this movie and with a star in Pari (Hetal Gada). She is the heart and soul of the movie even though Chhotu (Krrish Chhabria) keeps the rhythm going. And if such a cute movie doesn’t have a happy ending, nothing else would.

Four women, four different stories, each of them struggle in their own life connected to each other by hope. At the end of the day, they are left along to fight their own demons, and stage their own personal wars. Parched is a hard hitting story of four Rajasthan women, who live in a tightly controlled male subjugated society, hemmed in by custom. They unrepentantly talk about love, sex, their dreams and struggles in their day-to-day life. Rani (Tannishtha Chatterjee), a 30 something widow lives in a rural Rajasthan village with her 17 year old son Gulab (Riddhi Sen). She herself, married as a child, struggles against her 17 year old son’s dowry and marriage to Jaanki (Lehar Khan), a neighbor’s daughter who is hardly 15. Gulab is in the midst of a wrong crowd in the village who don’t believe in women’s education or development and are more interested in prostitutes & booze. Rani’s best friend Lajjo (Radhika Apte), is thrilled that her best friend’s son is getting married and that she will become grand mom soon. She herself has been made to believe by her alcoholic husband (Mahesh Balraj) that she can’t conceive a child and is subjected to torture by her husband regularly. Lajjo is also a skilled seamstress. She and Rani, along with other women, work for a local entrepreneur Kishan (Sumeet Vyas) and are saving for the village to finally get a satellite and television—their first real connection to the outside world. Bijli (Surveen Chawla) who is a close friend of both these women is an erotic dancer in a performing troupe and also a prostitute who entertains clients made weak by desire. Jaanki, who has been disowned by her husband Gulab dreams of completing her education and standing on her own feet. She is subjected to torture from Rani briefly before being married off by her to a young man from her village at the tail end of the story. Life moves like an interminable cycle of soreness and small delights when it all breaks down into pieces. Rani found out that Jaanki’s hair has been cut off, dishonoring her in her village. That results in Gulab rejecting her and going after wrong women and booze. Manoj’s cruelty towards Lajjo grows more and more severe. Bijli finds out a new girl might substitute her. A rural village where decade old traditions are fast changing but women are still being treated shabbily and fiercely. The Director Leena Yadav has made an honest attempt to show something unusual and a movie which is made for festive circuits not the regular Indian audience. Keeping pace with all the four stories while keeping in sync with the connecting characters is a wearisome task which the Director has handled very delicately. Almost all the men in the movie play villain barring Kishan who has played a compassionate character. But the cruelty goes undeterred and he is brutally killed for trying to bring change to village and making the women empowered. Even though the male characters play villains in the movie, the women are not much better mainly Rani, Lajjo and Bijli. Lajjo though subjected to torture by her husband frequently, lives for his approval all the time. Rani is fully aware of her dark days when she was agonized by her husband and mother-in-law still treats Jaanki with disdain and neglect. Bijli seems open-minded but can’t find a way to free herself for a life without a man. All three women are parched for everything; for passion, for love, for sex, for freedom but don’t have the audacity to liberate themselves for the life they are so in quest of. These conflicts of minds keep the movie appealing and startling. Russell Carpenter’s (“Titanic”) cinematography makes the village garishly alive and full of color. The movie has music, sex but more than that it sincerely shows the strength of the four beautiful women of a remote village who are smart, articulate, skillful, who make the dry land like one ringed in beauty.

A man is trapped in a desolate building and how he deals with the situation makes the story. It should be as simple as that, but it isn’t as simple as it looks. The real narrative is much more than this. Trapped is a movie whose director is the same who directed the epic movie Lootera & Udaan. Vikramaditya Motwane has chosen the ideal character Rajkummar Rao as the protagonist of the movie which was released in 17th Mar’17 and gathered rave reviews across the world. Saurya (Rajkummar Rao) is in love with Noorie(Geetanjali Thapa) whose wedding is already fixed. So they plan to run away and get married. Since Saurya lives in a bachelor’s hostel, he plans to take a flat where he can stay with Noorie. In a hurry to find an inexpensive accommodation, he shifts to a newly built high-rise which has some legal issues and hence has remained desolate. The security guard of the building is oblivious of his shifting to the building and even Noorie has no idea of his new address. Next morning while getting late to office, Saurya inadvertently locks himself inside the apartment with the key hanging outside the door. Few attempts to open the door fails and since the building has no electrical connection, his phone conks of and he is totally disconnected from outer world. But he doesn’t want to give up. The zeal to live drives his enthusiasm to think out of the box from among those normal household items in the house. He makes posters for help from cardboard and toothpaste and throws them out for somebody to notice. He puts his clothes on fire in the night for people to notice. But no one did really, his voice doesn’t reach people more than 100 feet below, his posters doesn’t reach the right place. With no food, water or electricity, it is a fight for unrelenting survival for Saurya. With passing days, he becomes claustrophobic and with nothing to eat, he starts surviving on cockroaches, ants, and pigeons and started talking to the lone rat in the house. One fine day, as a respite it rains heavily and he collected as much water as he can in all empty containers in the house and survives on them for some time. But with passing time, his psychological and physical health deteriorates. As a last option, he starts cutting the balcony window with a metal sheet that he found in the house and after days of cutting he finally succeeds. He climbs down through the windows for next five floors where he finds a balcony with no gates or doors and enters the floor to climb down the stairs and escapes the building. A few steps away from the building he faints due to weakness and is rushed to the hospital by locals. The story ends with some twists and turns. Whether the struggle he went through to come out of the house was worth? Vikramditya Motwane has the absolute brilliance to turn a one line story into a 105 minute tour de force. The one man army Rajkumar Rao makes the movie run on his own shoulder with his despair to escape from the flat and show his ordeal so effortlessly. It takes nerve to sit through the 105 minutes of the movie living with his hallucination. You will feel sorry for him when you see his hunger is turning him into a beast and a completely Vegan guy doesn’t hesitate to eat pigeons. You will feel a part of yourself along with the plot when with each sunset you get impatient along with him, how you feel imprisoned in the flat along with him. Not just inside the flat where he was stuck, but was fighting many demons with the outside world too. Like numerous people staying in Mumbai, he was fighting a battle to marry his girlfriend with his hand to mouth income. The director has taken very little things into accountability too. The 35+ floor apartment’s name is Swarg where the protagonist is stuck for more than a week. The very minute details have been taken care of when Saurya walks out of home and the guard gives him the typical look that those in Mumbai would give to any stranger. Coming out of the theater if you stop by a roadside eatery to have something, I am sure you will remember Saurya.

So many reviews on this movie have previously been written. So why another review? Well, it’s because I couldn’t resist from scripting few lines about this movie. Hindi Medium isn’t really a movie. This is real; the real story of today’s elite parents who think studying in an English Medium school can promise a good life for their children. The Story: Mita and Raj Batra, a rich cloth merchant from Chandni Chowk, are struggling to get their daughter admitted to an English Medium School. The obstacle is their language which is playing a barrier in getting their kid admitted. The school admits kids of only those parents who can speak good English which they aren’t. The plot of the movie is the series of incidents that follow when they want to get their kid admitted by hook or crook. Some humor, some satire and some reality make the plot very poignant. My Review: Story flows on how the English language divides our nation into various parts with the English Spoken few makes the elites of them all. The desi spoken ones; however rich are being considered to be pariah. Great Story, great comic timing, and great acting by Saba Qamar, Deepak Dobriyal, Sanjana Sanghi. Deepak Dobriyal steals your heart apart, Saba Qamar in her debut Hindi movie acts so effortlessly but it is Irrfan Khan who has nailed it like a Super Hero. What makes it more striking is, the family in Hindi Medium is a happy go lucky family, living their life in their own terms, a happy wife, a sweet kid and a rich cloth merchant. All was going on well until they realize the difficulty they have to face when they want to admit their kid in an English Medium School. Even a Prime Minister’s office can’t assure admission. For the sake of their kid, they move to posh Vasant Vihar which has the elite people of Delhi living in. For social recognition, they want to get their kid admitted in an English Medium School. Even a consulting firm who specializes in getting kids admitted to English Medium school couldn’t help. The consultant played by Tilottoma Shome advised them to play a poor family since as per Right to Education Act, some percentage of seats are reserved for poor people. So Batras shift to a Basti temporarily informing their neighbours that they are going to Paris. They visit a photo studio to click pictures with Paris scenes in background so as to post them in Social Networking site to convince their neighbours. Chemistry between Irrfan Khan and Saba Qamar is par excellence. Cinematography, songs, editing are average. The film hasn’t gone stereotype and rather looks very different than all those movies you see these days. Saket Chaudhary’s Hindi Medium deserves all the compliments it gets because of the inimitable storytelling and presentation. Amrita Singh is wasted in a miniscule character. If the movie is at all watchable, there are so many factors to it. The unstoppable Irrfan Khan, the debutante Saba Qamar, the superlative acting by Deepak Dobriyal, the simple yet beautiful storyline, the comic timings of all the actors. Everything about the movie is just awesome. There are few drawbacks as well but I won’t mention them because the perfection is much better and scores more than the drawbacks. Hindi medium is enormously charming; light hearted romantic comedy, and a socio-political satire on education system and the elite class’s charm for English Medium Schools. So, if you still haven’t watched the movie, don’t miss it. Once you are out of the theater, I am sure, you can relate to Mithu, and her husband Raj and they are going to stay in your heart for a longer time than usual.

You barely find a movie in bollywood where someone works hard to make their ends meet, and is treated like filth when the time comes to grant him/her the honour to live respectfully in their due time. Bollywood rarely makes films on marginalised community. In parts of UP and Bihar you will find a lot of people who sing and dance to make their ends meet and being treated like prostitutes. I am not sure if anybody has made any effort to showcase their story until Anarkali of Arrah happened. Anarkali of Arrah is a perfect “Seeti Maar” movie. Avinash Das’s effort is an audacious move for anyone as a debutante director. Only brave ones can try to tell such a story on their maiden attempt. The movie throw into light the nexus between police, politicians to torment the lower class people who struggle hard to earn some respect in society. Anarkali like her mother, takes over the reign as a performer or erotic dancer in a small remote village in Arrah. Her mother was shot dead by a drunk neta who flaunt his rifle as she pirouetted on stage. As a true daughter, she learned all the right art from her mother and took over where her mother left. Unlike her mother, she is unyielding, brave and would dare anyone who takes panga with her. She isn’t rich but she is brave and bold. She lives her life in her own terms. Rangeela who is from her troupe is always by her side no matter what happens. In fact, he is the one who hails the morale of Anarkali. Story takes a turn when a corrupt Vice Chancellor of a local University stakes claim to Anarkali’s body and sexuality. With money, power and politicians in his side, he doesn’t like to take a NO from anyone. But Anarkali isn’t one to coerce too. When he tries to apply force on Anarkali she shoves him off curtly. Like the earlier movie “Pink”, this is also about NO. Anarkali doesn’t want to get involved with anyone because she wants business in her own terms. She doesn’t want to be ruled by others. Just because Anarkali sings and dances raunchy numbers, does that give anyone the right to take her for a ride? The lilting songs and coarse lyrics attract the attention. The bucolic scenes and dialogs plays an vital part of the movie. Swara Bhaskar has got a role of lifetime after “Nil Baatey Sanata” where the entire movie runs on her shoulder. She has flawlessly amazed & warranted her character; Pankaj Tripathi has Rangeela plays the ideal associate to her but knowing his talent he could have been utilized much better. What stands out in the story isn’t just one, not two but many factors. Swara Bhaskar holds the rhythm of audience till the end of the movie. Sanjay Mishra holds his citadel securely. Pankaj Tripathi plays just perfect. Anwar, the young actor who has a crush on Anarkali is equally good. Music, sound & cinematography, dialogs have been given remarkable thought into. But more than all these, Anarkali of Arrah showcases a woman who is fearless enough not to shed tears when the world falls apart around her, she fights back, she fights back all alone against all odds. She shows how a woman stands for her rights all alone to hold their dignity in place. She shows that there can be heroes among women too. The question remains unanswered however at the end of narrative. Can we ever respect women who work all their way on streets to make their ends meet? Can we respect women who perform item numbers?